Life Of A Law Student's Guide To: Gender and the Law

Faith

June 1

Welcome back to another one of my Life Of A Law Student's Guide To... posts! Gender and the Law was a class I took in my 4th year of law school and this was another class I enjoyed taking. This class is also an elective but, honestly, if I could I would make it a compulsory class.

So, some of the topics you may cover in this class are:

liberal feminism and the law
cultural feminimist and the law
intersectionality and anti-essentialism and the law
gender and gender based violence
an examination of certain areas of the law from a feminist perspective

The point of this class is to examine different aspects of the law and the legal system from a feminist perspective. In the first half of the semester, we looked at different feminist theories and applied them to the legal system. In the second half of the semester, we had a lot of guest lecturers who analysed their area of legal practice using a feminist theory/lens.

My advice would be to keep an open mind in this class. I've understood feminism and aspects of it since high school (I went to an all girls' school as well, so some teachers really drilled this into us). But, I know a lot of people don't know much about feminism or may have some misconceptions about it (no feminism is NOT man-hating, it's about equality and equity; big difference). So, keep an open mind. That's all you'll need for this class.

Overall, it was definitely an eye-opening class. There were some aspects of this class I already knew a little bit about beforehand, but there were other points brought up that I had never thought of. It was also a super important class. The reality is that the law does not treat everyone the same; men and women are treated differently and when you go further race, class and sexual orientation all play a role in how people are treated by the legal system. I think it's important for more people to understand this because this is something that needs to be addressed and fixed.

So, this is my guide to Gender and the Law. I hope my summary of this class was useful. As usual, thank you so much for reading and I hope you have a lovely day.